Pages

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Infectious Thoughts

Anna has been on a baby doll kick lately. She can get absorbed for an hour or more caring for one of these dolls. At first, I thought this was a good thing. Now I know better.

One can’t underestimate the power of thoughts. There is not a single thing we do that we don’t first have the thought of doing it – whether it is a day or a millisecond in advance. Some thoughts even have the power to spread from person to person like an infectious disease. This is why Anna’s doll phase is a bad thing; she is spreading thoughts of babies around our home.

A few weeks ago I came home and found mom down in the school room. When I sat down to talk with her, she was rocking one of Anna’s dolls and Anna was helping. CrazyMom told me that Anna likes to act as if CrazyMom is the mom and Anna is mom’s helper. I did not think much of it until Anna wandered off in the house. As CrazyMom and I continued talking, I noticed that she was still rocking the baby.

“Um, Hun. Anna is gone you know.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Well, I just noticed that you are still rocking the baby doll.”

“Yeah,” she said and did not stop.

A few days later I came down for breakfast and CrazyMom was feeding a baby doll a bottle. I quickly glanced around and did not see Anna.

“Um, Hun.”

“Anna was just right here!” CrazyMom protested before I had a chance to say what I was thinking.

I let it go. But then I saw the shopping list on the fridge. Notice what it says on the top right. When I asked CrazyMom about it she assured me it was just something for Anna's dolls.

And it is not just CrazyMom, either. I found K.D., who is particularly sensitive about gender roles, feeding a baby doll the other day. I knew then that I had an epidemic on my hands.

I have been working hard to eliminate these infectious thoughts and I thought I was making good progress for awhile. But CrazyMom keeps making these comments despite my disapproving looks. “Oh, look at these cute shoes,” she says as we pass a clearance rack at Meijer. “Now all I need is a little boy to put them on.” And last night when CrazyMom and I were discussing sleeping arrangements in our home I said, “We could always put another bed in Anna’s room.”

Sounds beyond hope to me ... she's done caught the bug and there's not much you can do about it. I'd say ... jump in and play along. You've got plenty of love to go around ... and you haven't caught up to our family yet.

I can so relate. I am having major baby withdrawal right now and have been dropping hints that perhaps we should call up our old foster agency and take them up on one of the babies they keep begging us to take. We'll see!